


Another Word for Nothin' Left to Lose

by persnickett



Category: Fast & Furious (2009), Fast Five (2011), Fast and the Furious (2001), Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Domestic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-04
Updated: 2011-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-25 16:57:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was the trouble of doing this with Brian. Staying here, sharing meals and a family, his home -- everything. Dom had always gone where the road led, and moments like this pulled at him, dragged him off the wanderer’s course he set himself, into settled, mapped-out places he’d always steered clear of. Getting too settled was the way you got yourself burned, in Dom’s experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Word for Nothin' Left to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: sex, blood, sex with blood (minor, this is still fluffy old me we’re talking about here), long thinky Dom tangents

The sun was already starting to angle down toward the horizon; slanting in through the windshield and making him squint, painting the dust that kicked up behind the Challenger’s tires as he pulled into the drive a billowing, smoke white. Still, Dom set the handbrake and let the engine idle for a second or two while he gathered everything up and put it into the bag from the market. He stopped to take another last look at the little Hot Wheels package before putting that in too.  
   
For what felt like the first time in a long time, he was in no particular rush -- although from the way the driver’s side door was opening next to him without any help from Dom, it didn’t look like you could say the same for Brian.  
   
“Nice,” Brian greeted him, holding out one eager arm to take the bag of groceries and let Dom slide out from behind the wheel. He had the other arm wrapped tightly around a precious bundle of his own.  
   
Dom paused a second to take the picture in. He was still getting used to it, the pair Brian and his little girl made, with the late afternoon rays gleaming off the gold in their hair.  
   
The newest addition to their family had a complexion that had settled at a happy and striking medium somewhere between Brian’s sun-bright gold, and Mia’s dusky, fetching mocha. She had honey-toffee ringlets several tones deeper than Brian’s sun-bleached, straw-coloured curls, and her eyes were not quite her daddy’s brilliant blue, but a profound violet that Dom was sure could have turned Elizabeth Taylor’s green with envy. But then, just maybe, Dom was a little biased.  
   
The idea to name her Leticia, though, Dom wasn’t sure which of them it had come from first, and it didn’t matter. It was the one piece of her that was _Dom’s_.  
   
With both hands full now, Brian stepped back from where he was crowded impatiently up to the Challenger’s open door, just far enough to let Dom out, then shifted his burden carefully to jut out an expectant hip.  
   
“Keys?”  
   
Dom arched a brow. “In a hurry?”  
   
“Always,” he grinned, eyes sparkling. Brian might never grow out of that look he had. The one like everything in the damn universe was one big hilarious inside joke, and Brian was the only one in on it.  
   
Dom felt the corner of his own mouth turn up in response as he shook his head and reached out to tuck the fob still in his hand into the proffered jeans-pocket, instead of his own.  
   
“Here, say g’night,” Brian cajoled, turning toward him so the little one could reach short, dimpled arms out for Dom’s neck. “We’re gonna go for a drive.”  
   
Going for a drive, they’d learned pretty early, was one of the quickest ways to get their little girl to sleep. Only it seemed ’Tisha preferred the smooth, rumbling pitch of the Challenger to the snarl and hum of the GTR. Dom liked to point out that she’d obviously (and rightly) inherited the Toretto taste for muscle.  
   
“Ven acá, Cosita.” Dom gathered up his niece, leaving Brian free to make his way inside with the groceries. He watched Brian go -- at his usual top speed -- taking the three steps to the porch in a single lanky-legged stride, before turning his nose into the little head of curls at his temple; breathing in the smell of baby shampoo and laundered cotton.  
   
Dom rocked his treasured armful a little while they waited, pressed a kiss to the round, plump little cheek. The bittersweet part of being the eldest was that Dom got to have memories of Mia at this age, that she’d had cheeks just like these. The same little chin, the button nose. There were times, expressions she made, when Tish looked so like her mother had as a child, Dom felt a dizzying déjà vu, and needed to look away for a second. She would break hearts one day, his Cosita.  
   
It was a near thing as it was. There were days Dom’s chest was tight for hours with the nostalgia and the sheer beauty of her, this staggering gift his sister had left them - before the relentless fever that started sometime during the process of giving birth to her daughter finally took Mia from them all, just days later.  
   
Brian reappeared, jogging back toward them with two sets of keys in hand now, and he clicked the remote for the doors on the Nissan first. Dom took the moment to murmur his good-nights to his little Cosita in Spanish. Their father’s eclectic notion of ‘family’ meant he and Mia had been exposed to a smorgasbord of languages growing up. It had only proven a help to them in times of need, and Dom would do his best to see his family was raised just the same.  
   
Tisha had only just started to talk, a word here and there. She could ask for milk, and her daddy, and call for ‘Tio’ when she needed Dom. For now, her only response to Dom’s quiet goodnight was to lay her plump cheek to his shoulder, her vivid eyes half-lidded already but trained intently on her father as he went about retrieving her car seat from the Nissan.  
   
“I don’t know why you even bother putting the baby seat in your car at all,” Dom noted, as Brian opened the door and slid the passenger side seat forward to buckle it in.  
   
“She loves the GTR. Doncha baby girl?” Brian twisted his neck to toss the words over his shoulder at them, rather than interrupt his work.  
   
As smart as they all thought they’d been, picking out cars that still had balls while having enough real estate in the back to accommodate the beginnings of a family they’d once expected to get a lot larger, once there was a kid in the picture those electric seats were nothing but a slow, fancy pain in the ass. The driver’s side was practically impossible. Dom had plans to rectify that as soon as he could get his hands on the parts.  
   
“We just need something _slow_ to put her to sleep,” Brian concluded, tossing the quip back over his shoulder without looking up. Dom didn’t need to see his face to know he had a wide, smartass smile plastered all over that face of his.  
   
“The way you drive? It’s a wonder _anybody_ can relax.”  
   
Brian did look back at him that time, and sure enough, there was that blinder of a shit-eating grin, firmly in place.  
   
“You’re tagged in,” he said, when he finished what he was doing and straightened up, delivering a good-natured jab to the bicep, before reaching out to collect their drowsing child out of Dom’s arms. “Tell Uncle Dom he’s tagged in. Tag him in.”  
   
Brian picked up the tiny hand and leaned in to tap it on his shoulder before he leaned back again and fired another halogen-bright grin Dom’s way. “We’re outta here.”  
   
“Take care of both my baby girls, now.”  
   
The O’Conner duo merely sent him a mischievous flash of those piercing eyes that said neither of them made any promises to behave.  
   
And Dom just stood there, with the late afternoon sun on his back, indulging the fond smile he could feel starting to move across his face and watching the glint off the Challenger’s tail out of sight.  
 

~~~

   
Dom had the base for the pasta sauce bubbling on the stove already by the time he heard the purr of the Challenger’s engine and the crunch of gravel under her tires announcing Brian’s return.  
   
He gave the pot a stir, and turned down the heat to a simmer. When Brian cooked, he let it burn, sticking and blackening at the bottom of the pan, and then no matter how carefully you stirred, some of the charred bitterness was churned up, giving the entire batch of sauce a bitter, smoked sort of flavour.  
   
Brian claimed he liked it like that, but then Brian was full of shit all the time anyway. Sometimes it was still hard for Dom to get enough of a read on him to tell what the hell Brian really liked, besides Wonder Bread with the damn crusts cut off.  
   
He gave up years ago, trying to figure out how somebody who talked so damn much could manage to somehow never tell you a damn thing. Had to, because trying to riddle Brian O’Conner out could likely land a man in the loony bin. How somebody could walk around looking so carefree and open and still manage to keep half the shit about himself such a mystery -- his family, his history, why Brian did pretty much any of the inexplicable shit he did.  
   
Hell, the million dollar question was why he’d hung around this long. The days of Brian spending most of his waking hours locked up in the baby’s room and coming out red-eyed and exhausted looking were behind them, and Dom had gotten out of the habit long ago of checking the Nissan’s back seat for packed bags every time he passed by. But then with Mia gone, Dom still supposed that could change any time.  
   
Dom could see him now, through the kitchen window, standing on the porch holding Tisha. The transition was the trick sometimes, getting the little sleeping beauty from the back of the Dodge into bed. Without waking her up enough to shake off the drowsiness of her short nap in the car, and take advantage of the quick rest to be suddenly up and at ‘em for another two hours.  
   
Tonight, it seemed, Brian was playing it safe; taking his time. Dom stopped what he was doing and joined them for a minute in watching the sun sink into the horizon over the water. There weren’t a lot of things that could make Brian O’Conner slow down.  
   
With the rhythmic chop-chop of his knife gone quiet, Dom could hear them now too; Brian’s voice a low, steady murmur. He could have been telling a bedtime story from memory, out of one of the kids’ books they’d both read out loud too many times by now to be healthy for an adult brain. Or sometimes -- when he thought Dom wasn’t listening -- Brian told Tish stories about her mother, stories maybe one day she would understand.  
   
This could be one of those times. Brian’s flowing baritone timbre was pitched a little lower than his habit, with a rolling sort of rise and fall…  
   
No, Brian was _singing_.  
   
Brian couldn’t sing worth shit, but Tish didn’t seem to know any better. Maybe she was gonna be just as tone-deaf as her father. Dom smiled a bit over the cutting board, when he thought he could make out the struggling melody; an old folk tune about a couple of hitchhikers catching a ride in a diesel truck. All the way to New Orleans. It used to be Jesse’s favourite request whenever Vince actually pulled out his acoustic guitar.  
   
Dom could remember him singing along -- Jesse’s voice wasn’t squeaky and annoying when he sang, it was surprisingly sweet and clear, like one of those boy’s choir kids. Vince had a good singing voice on him too, when he used it. Dom was one of the few people who ever got the privilege.  
   
It might have been the memories, that made him set the knife down again and listen. It sure as hell wasn’t Brian’s talent that did it. But it was the heart, and not the tune, that made a lullaby work anyway.  
   
And Brian was truly putting some heart into it now -- beginning to rock, and sway slowly as he moved around the porch trying to coax the little one into sleep. Dom picked up the knife again but he couldn’t seem to look away from that window. He felt like he was getting another rare piece of the puzzle.  
   
Singing abilities -- or the lack of them -- aside, Dom had never had much call to learn whether or not Brian made much of a dancer. Even if he definitely had the energy for it, Dom supposed he’d just always assumed not, not with those long, awkward legs and that sloppy, slouching posture -- hands jammed into his pockets all the time.  
   
That whole lazy, laid-back surfer veneer was deceptive though -- part of the camouflage. Brian could _move_ when he wanted to.  
   
Dom had seen him do it, things that made his heart stop, to watch. Riding speeding trucks like surfboards, jumping between moving vehicles -- or entire buildings, for that matter -- scrambling over rooftops and through windows with a quick, practiced ease.  
   
Dom could have strangled him when he heard Brian let Mia jump off a building with him, on one of his kamikaze stunts. Hell, she’d been pregnant at the time. Not that she’d told either one of them yet. Dom looked back out the window at Brian holding his child; the only part of his sister he still had left to call his own.  
   
Brian was still swaying and sashaying around, but it looked like his pace had slowed, and from what Dom could hear, he’d gone quiet now too. Dom watched him work his way backward -- the slow swing of hips starting to fall slightly out of rhythm, movements going liquid and rolling, like the ocean. Even if their Cosita was none the wiser, Dom could still see what Brian was up to, dropping his ass to the seat of the porch swing and sneaking their bodies into a relaxed, reclining pose.  
   
Dom looked back to his dinner, finally. Away from the last light of the day setting a fiery halo to their joined silhouette; Brian, sliding the lean length of his body flat along the porch swing -- one foot on the floor, the better to rock them gently -- and Tisha, cradled protectively against his chest, finally starting to drowse with her father carding long, blunt fingers gently through her curls, his own eyelids looking just as heavy.  
   
But just as he dropped his gaze, Dom could swear he caught a telltale flicker of blue that said Brian wasn’t as distracted or sleepy as he let on.  
   
This was the trouble of doing this with Brian. Staying here, sharing meals and a family, his home -- _everything_. Dom had always gone where the road led, and moments like this pulled at him, dragged him off the wanderer’s course he set himself, into settled, mapped-out places he’d always steered clear of. Getting too settled was the way you got yourself burned, in Dom’s experience.  
   
Now here he was, with fuckin’ Brian, of all people -- restless as a jungle cat, and twice as unpredictable.  And Dom, finally free to run as far-flung and rowdy as he might want, and instead what was he doing, choosing to take his sweet-ass time over cooking their goddamn dinner _._  
   
Domesticated. The pair of them. A couple of ne’er-do-well beasts tamed by a tiny beauty; always the magic superpower of every Daddy’s Little Girl, if Dom’s own father had been any indication.  
   
Dom kept his eyes on his cooking and didn’t look up to see whether those laser-blue eyes were on him, if they tracked the movement of his hands as he worked. Because that lithe, languid pose and the slow, rhythmic motion of long, agile fingers was starting to stir up different memories now. Images.  
   
Things now gone dark, and bitter, that were better off left at the bottom of the pot.  
 

~~~

   
It was too hot here, to be cooking in the heat of the day, so Dom did this in the evenings and they had meals for the week. Or a couple of days, with their appetites.  
   
The produce was different here, too. The tomatoes were more acidic. They didn’t have the sweetness the Italian tomatoes should lend to the recipe, and call him traditional, but it just wasn’t the way his Nonna Toretto used to make it. So Dom had been experimenting.  
   
Tonight’s venture was sweet peppers. He was still dicing them up with the big chef’s knife when Brian sauntered into the kitchen looking like ten counts of mischief and misdemeanours.  
   
He was up to something. And Dom had a sneaking suspicion what it might be.  
   
He set the knife down and turned his back, moving to the stove to stir again.  
   
“That’s it, she’s down,” Brian said, casually.  
   
“Good. Hands off,” Dom said, over a shoulder.  
   
He didn’t need to turn around to know Brian was leaning in behind him to steal a fistful of vegetables off the cutting board and start stuffing them in his mouth. Even with the sun down, the kitchen was still warm enough that Dom could feel the added heat off Brian’s skin press in on him when they stood this close.  
   
“Busted,” Brian drawled in his ear, managing not to sound the least bit sorry about it, before drawing back enough to settle a hip against the counter to watch Dom work. Right in front of the cutting board.  
   
“There’ll be nothing left for the sauce.” Dom crowded his shoulder into the center of Brian’s chest, regaining his work space. “Won’t taste right.”  
   
“You know I can’t wait to taste your sauce Dom.” Brian held back his roguish grin just long enough to poke his tongue obscenely into his cheek a couple of times.  
   
“Yeah, hands off,” Dom said again. He didn’t smile.  
   
He was on edge, even if he wasn’t sure why. This kind of fucking around definitely wasn’t new. But then what Brian did next, was another story.  
   
“Okay okay,” he laughed. “What if I put my hands _here_?”  
   
And there it was, the move he’d been sure was coming -- Brian sliding up behind him so Dom could feel the too-warm pressure of his torso against his back, Brian’s hands traveling up over his ribs to cup his pecs as if he had something there to squeeze.  
   
“Brian.” Dom kept his voice flat, his hand on the kitchen knife steady. “I’m cooking.”  
   
“Did I say you should stop?” One teasing thumb tweaked a nipple, and Dom felt his jaw clench against the reaction that shot through him like hitting the spray.  
   
Maybe Dom had seen this coming down the road for a while, but that didn’t make it any easier. They’d stopped doing whatever you could call the things they used to get up to the day Mia told Brian Tish was on the way. It was unspoken, but it held firm.  
   
They’d only slipped the once, three days after Mia’s burial, a quick fumble and jerk in the hallway, both of them soaked in tequila and grief. Didn’t even make it to the bedrooms -- leaned dizzily up against the wall; Brian heaving rough, wracking breaths like dry sobs, and Dom driving their mouths together so damn hard he couldn’t tell whether the blood he could taste on their lips was his own.  
   
The house had been quiet the next morning and it was late, long past dark, when Brian turned up again. Dom could still remember the silence, the way it still hung in the air when he came to the door of the nursery to find Brian had already laid the baby back in her crib. But he was lingering, hunched over the side; knuckles white in their grip on the crib’s edge giving Dom more of an answer than any question he could ask as to when Brian had left that morning, whether or not he'd been planning on coming back.

  
“We good?” Dom had hated the way the sound of his voice had fallen bluntly into the quiet of the room with that drop-in-a-bucket sort of hollowness.  
   
Brian jumped at the sound of it; the slumped muscles in his back moving into tense, unsure bunches. “Yeah,” he said, without turning around. “We're good.”  
                                                                                            
They’d never spoken another word about the slip that night, or any night since. But it had put them on a slow road back to this place. Back to furtive, lingering looks over curly little heads of hair, back to Brian catching Dom staring while he was rocking the baby, and to bawdy jokes and inappropriate touching in the kitchen. The memory of it now wasn’t helping matters either, with Brian’s teasing breath gusting over the back of his neck and prickling goosebumps into his skin. This was a dangerous road to be on, and Dom was looking for the next exit.  
   
“You’re such a punk, O’Conner,” Dom kept his tone light, suppressing the growl that wanted to take over at the way Brian leaned in closer -- probably grinning like a jack-o-lantern -- to push more of the firm, insistent heat of his body all down the length of Dom’s own.  
   
Dom thrust a shoulder backward, bumping Brian’s chest just hard enough to get the message across. It was still a game, but it was a risky one, and lately it looked like it might be starting to get serious.  
   
“Whaddya got some kind of kinky domestic fetish in that bleach blond head of yours?”  
   
“This from the guy who was totally giving me the eye a second ago while I’m _holding our kid_ on a porch swing.”  
   
So Brian _had_ been watching him. Maybe the game really was getting serious, and it was no surprise Brian wasn’t afraid to play dirty. _Our kid,_ he’d said, probably knowing the things it would do to Dom’s chest, inside. Dom shook off the softening effect of the thought, moved a hand to brace himself against the edge off the counter.  
   
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said quietly, before slamming backward -- this time hard enough to knock Brian stumbling back a couple of steps to come back-up to the refrigerator with a dull scuffle-and-thump sound.  
   
Dom took his advantage and pivoted to face him, but Brian was still close enough in the little room to cover the gap between them in a single, long-legged stride, moving back in front of him before he could turn full around.

Brian’s eyes didn’t narrow when he was angry, they got wide and searching, watching for the next move in case it was coming at him hard. Dom had seen a lot of eyes like that in places he swore he was never going back to, on guys whose fight or flight instincts never seemed to land on ‘flight’.  
   
So this wasn’t anger -- the slitted, glittering blue fire Brian was aiming his way now. It was something else.  
   
“You wake the baby,” came Brian’s low drawl, “I’ll kick your ass.” The toothy white grin was still in place but there was an edge to it now; challenge. That, Dom could give him.  
   
“Now that I’d like to see.”  
   
“Oh yeah?” Brian stepped back far enough to peel his t-shirt up and off, and toss it to the floor. Dom didn’t pause to watch the way the action made the muscles under the tanned skin shift and stretch, and he didn’t take the time to follow suit, either.  
   
If they started grappling on the spot, Brian would put that long-limbed advantage to work, so Dom kept them moving, barrelling forward square into Brian, letting his full weight drive both of them into the L of the countertop. On their way past the stove, Brian’s elbow caught the spoon, knocking it out of the pot and to the floor with a clatter and spattering the beige of the cupboard doors in red.  
   
“You’re cleaning that up,” Dom grated out, pressing their foreheads together, like a couple of boxers squaring off, and torquing his arm out of Brian’s grasp where he was trying to twist it into a hold.  
   
“No problem. Cook doesn’t clean, remember?” Brian grated back. He was reaching around Dom’s back with both arms now, hands yanking at the fabric of Dom’s shirt, trying to force it up high enough for the cloth to fetter and bind his arms.  
   
Dom moved back to pull it off himself, instead. He lost at least two of the buttons in the process, he could feel the little pop and tear, heard them fly off and scatter -- hitting the floor with hard little clicking and skittering sounds.  
   
Brian hadn’t moved, he was standing braced against the counter, the edge of his tongue coming out to wet his lips, eyes flicking quickly over Dom’s approaching frame.    
   
Dom ignored the appraising look, couldn’t afford to consider the meaning behind it; he was moving in again to get an arm around Brian’s neck and bring him forward for a head lock. But that was when Brian whirled both of them around, inevitably succeeding in getting a leg in between Dom’s. They were both headed for the ground now, bumping hard into the cupboards as they went down.  
   
The impact set the cutting board toppling. Onions and peppers bounced into the air and came down like a quick tumble of petals -- the bright movement enough of a warning to catch Dom’s attention just in time.  
   
He looked up to see the big kitchen knife spinning on its bolster, coming off the counter far enough to tip on its axis and slice through the air toward them. Dom had just enough warning to thrust himself on top of Brian, pinning his outstretched arm down and out of the way, and make a quick blocking motion, but the knife bounced off the heel of his hand to come down over both of their shoulders before hitting the floor with a clatter.  
   
 “Oh shit,” Brian laughed, under him.  
   
But playtime was officially over. Dom kept his weight down and brought a knee up to Brian’s thigh, in order to force both his hips to the floor.  
   
He settled himself over Brian’s thighs to keep him there, put a hand out for both his shoulders to lay him flat. Brian gave one more grinning attempt at batting his grip away but then the look in Dom’s eye must have shown he was done screwing around, because he felt Brian’s resistance go out of him -- the sharp, bright energy of a minute before turning to a watchful, anticipating tension.  
   
Brian was silent while Dom checked him over, ran his hands over the length of his arms, scanned his chest for marks, finally even gripped Brian’s chin to turn his head roughly and check his nape.  
   
 “I’m fine,” Brian said tersely, jerking free. And really, it was one of the choicest pieces of all the usual bullshit to come out of Brian’s mouth in a good long while.  
   
“You’re not fine. You’re reckless,” Dom argued, because it was true, and because this whole situation seemed to be putting him more and more inexplicably on edge. “ _Rash_ ,” he asserted, punctuating it with a quick open-palmed shove. “How am I gonna trust you with my family huh?”  
   
Playtime really was over. Dom sat back to pull himself up off of Brian, but one of those grappling arms hooked itself around his neck. Dom fought off a wave of fresh irritation. How in hell could Brian still want to wrestle?  
   
“It’s my family too now.” Apparently Brian had taken exception to Dom’s assessment, because there they were -- those wide, blazing eyes Dom recognized; raking over him, calculating the next move. Brian wanted something alright, and it wasn’t another play-fight.  
   
Dom’s brief thump to the shoulder had left a blunt smear of red across the pale tan of Brian’s skin. The knife must have caught him after all. The damn thing was still lying next to them, too damn close, with the sharp tip pointing innocently in the direction of Brian’s ribs. There was another mark, darker and redder from when the cut was fresh, striping the length of Brian’s forearm too. He followed the way it drew Dom’s eye, but didn’t make a move to rub it off.  
   
“What’s left of it,” Dom agreed, low and quiet, knocking the knife, hard, away from them and sending it skating away across the floor before Brian could manage to roll onto it, doing whatever the hell this was.  
   
The arm around his neck stiffened and a look flashed through the angry lines of Brian’s expression that Dom couldn’t read.  
   
“I’m sorry, okay.” But the bitter, cutting tone didn’t sound sorry. “I loved her too, Dom. I loved her too and I’m sorry. I’m sorry every damn day that she’s gone. Mia deserved better, but she’s _gone_.”  
   
This tableau was too familiar, Brian laid out under him, streaked in blood and panting. Thrusting angry apologies at him for losing someone neither of them could replace.  
   
Dom put a hand down forcefully on either side of Brian’s head, bracing to push back off of him and break the hold around his neck, but as he leaned forward their bodies came together enough that Brian could arch up under him and bring their hips together.  
   
Dom wrenched backward from the contact, in this position he could feel the effect their roughhousing and messing around from earlier had obviously had on Brian, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want Brian knowing his own reaction, knowing Dom wasn’t immune to it either -- to the way they joked, found excuses to touch. The provocative, permissive habits Brian had been making of _letting_ Dom watch him, or the way seemed content just to leave Dom’s blood marking his skin like a brand.  
   
But it was too late for hiding that now.  
   
“That flattering myself?”  
   
Dom looked for the victorious look of sharp-edged satisfaction to cross Brian’s features, but nothing came. His usual guarded, closed expression was back in place, and Brian’s tone was quiet suddenly.  
   
“Say it Dom,” he said, low but clear. “Say it’s too soon. Tell me it hasn’t been long enough and I’ll stop.”  
   
The soft, submissive murmur was meant to defuse the anger, Dom knew, soften some of the tension. Instead somehow, he felt an irrational sizzle of red behind his eyes and in his chest, like lighting up a flare.  
   
Brian was talking again, still quiet but taking on an edge of urgency, like he needed to get this out before Dom could put a stop to it.  
   
“The day you got here, you said you’d never seen her so happy. You remember that, Dom?” The searching blue eyes flicked over his features, watching his reaction.  
   
Talking about Mia was no way to convince him this was anything like a good idea. Dom pushed backward again to say as much, he lifted his body up, putting enough tension against Brian’s locked arm hold to warn him Dom would pick him right up off the floor and drop him hard, if he had to.  
   
Dom should have known he’d stubbornly keep his hold, even with his back coming clear off the floor, and call that bluff. That was one thing about the way Brian had always done things. Take what was coming …and fuck the consequences.  
   
“No,” Brian grunted. “No, remember what I told you, I said it was because we were free. She would want me to be free, Dom. And we both always wanted it for you. It’s all we ever wanted.”  
   
So maybe it wasn’t too soon, who the fuck knew, but the whole damn point was maybe it would never be right. Probably never had been. But it didn’t stop his body from reacting to the pressure and the friction and the close, solid heat of Brian against him over and over tonight.  
   
Dom gave up pulling and gripped the arm that was still locked around his neck at the shoulder instead, thumb pressing into the soft space under the collar bone and forcing it down to the floor. Brian didn’t flinch away from the pressure, didn’t let up on his hold an inch. Instead, that sharp glint of satisfaction Dom had been expecting came into his eye and Brian moved with it, bringing his arm downward and pulling Dom still closer.  
   
“Say it, Dom.”  
   
Brian didn’t try to rub up against him again, but he wasn’t moving either, not showing a single sign of letting up on his clinging hold.  
   
“…So fucking reckless,” Dom growled.    
   
The words weren’t ‘stop’ though and they both knew it. Brian lost no more time, he was thrusting up against him again, and this time Dom was hard enough by now that Brian’s erection grinding over his own sent him a rush of sensation. The icy-warm wash over his skin pulled a surprised, panted breath from him.  
   
Brian didn’t hesitate. He took advantage of the moment to bring his head up and push their mouths together, bite at Dom’s lip. Dom felt his fingers clench tight enough to dent into the skin again, but Brian wasn’t waiting for any more of a response before he was moving down Dom’s neck -- nipping and sucking at the sensitive flesh, scraping his teeth over the taut tendon, mouthing over and along his collar bone.  
   
Dom shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, felt the response surge through his bloodstream. It felt like mere seconds before hands were working at his shorts, and Dom opened his eyes to see Brian had his jeans yanked open and shoved down already.  
   
Dom stopped to take it in. Brian had always had a body worth looking at, but the sight of him now -- hands clenched desperately into fists at his sides and so hard with need for him his cock stood up enough to leave air between it and his belly -- it made Dom’s skin feel flushed, and his mouth wetter with want.  
   
So they were doing this.  
   
Dom wasn’t wasting any more time either. He moved away to shuck those jeans the rest of the way off. He pulled Brian toward him -- bared skin skidding and bumping on the linoleum -- and pushed one of his knees up.  
   
Dom spat onto his fingers, watching for Brian’s reaction; blue eyes going dark with the pupils widening in anticipation. Brian met his eyes then, and their gazes locked. Dom moved to drag the wet of his fingers through the warm, waiting cleft of his ass.  
   
“Reckless,” Dom repeated. He pushed one slick finger in, pulled it out again, “Wild.” He pushed in two, and the line of Brian’s jaw hardened but he thrust down, meeting the pressure gamely.  
   
“You do _everything_ the way you drive.” Dom scissored his fingers, feeling the hot, tight stretch. “Too fast, out of control. …Dangerous.”   
   
Brian shifted his hips slightly, trying to find that angle that would turn the stretch and the pressure into something more. Always moving too damn fast. Dom used his free hand to grip Brian’s hip bone, pin it to the floor.  
   
“How long before you hit the road again?” he asked roughly. “…Why you still here, Brian. _This_ what you’ve been waiting for?” Dom twisted his fingers, crooked them a little.  
   
Brian gasped, and his hand made an aborted, helpless movement like he was resisting the urge to put it on his dick, in case Dom put a stop to that too.  
   
“You want me gone?” His voice was coming breathless and husky already, and the sound of it made Dom’s cock nudge impatiently at the restraining fabric of his shorts.  
   
Dom made another stroking motion that made Brian give an encouraging, almost desperate, grunt sound and bite down on his lip.  
   
“That wasn’t the question.”  
   
“…I’m here ‘cause I can’t…” Brian was starting to come unravelled now, pressing his hip into Dom’s grip and starting to breathe harder, as Dom continued to repeat the motion. He wouldn’t be any good for talking things out much longer.  
   
“This is where I belong,” Brian panted, “with you…to you.” The words came out between little grunts and curses that could have come from pleasure or just the effort of maintaining concentration now.  
   
“Until you tell me you want me gone…” Brian breathed, “I’m yours.”  
   
Dom felt his stroking fingers go slack. The desperate words didn’t sound calculated for effect, but that might have been what made them hit so hard.  
   
There was something about the way Brian looked at him when they did this, the direct current of the way their eyes met, like their bodies coming together closed a circuit somehow. It made them both too honest, and it felt dangerous. It could make Dom admit too much one day, let Brian in too far, across the line where there was no going back.  
   
He could feel the threat of it now, things building in his chest that could well up and press against his walls like a dam building up pressure. Things soft but powerful, things nothing like anger that always somehow managed to get mixed up with it, when it came to Brian. Completely unlike and still maddeningly _like_ anger -- fears, maybe. …Passions.  
   
“Turn over,” Dom told him, and Brian was eagerly over on hands and knees before Dom could get his shorts the rest of the way off.  
   
Dom settled a hand on Brian’s nape first as he knelt behind him, stroked his thumb over the short hairs at the base of his skull. He couldn’t help a little self-satisfied smile, when Brian dropped his head down and shivered at the touch. So easy. Dom remembered this. He used to love winding Brian up like this.  
   
Brian’s body was even beautiful from this angle, the pretty bastard. Dom ran his gaze and his free hand down the length of the long, lean columns of muscle on either side of his spine all the way down to the rounded, firm globes of that ass. Definitely the best part of this view.  
   
He could have pushed his fingers back in, but he wanted to tease him a little more first. He pulled Brian backward into place so he could slide his shaft through the dip between those cheeks. It got him a pleased sounding moaning noise from Brian that made his dick twitch in its little groove. He’d been hard so long now it left a slippery little smear on the small of Brian’s back.  
   
Dom swiped it away with his fingers and put it to the best use he could, stroking around Brian’s opening again and making him push back impatiently.  
   
“In a hurry?”  
   
Brian gave a short huff, that might have been wry laughter. “Always.”  
   
“Suck.”  
   
He leaned forward to offer the fingers of the other hand to Brian, who was already turning his head to take them willingly in. Dom didn’t know what had changed since he’d had Brian’s mouth on his skin just minutes before -- maybe it was the welcoming little hum noise Brian made -- but the wet heat of it came like a surprise, even when he’d been asking for it. His cock throbbed where it was pressed up against Brian’s ass again and he let out a groan.  
   
Dom ran his hand up Brian’s spine again, while Brian worked -- shut his eyes, swirled that smartass tongue. He had more or less forgotten the cut on his palm, it opened up enough to leave another long, skidded stripe up the smooth expanse of that warm sweat-damp skin.     
   
Dom finally pulled slicked fingers away from what Brian was doing, to put them into play and get down to business. Even after that, the first thrust was dry and they both felt it, but Dom slid out, spit again, pushed back in, slower.  
   
“Breathe.”  
   
It was as much a command for Brian as for himself -- the tight ring of muscle felt like a vice around his dick -- but a couple of deep breaths always helped get them there, over that edge where the pull and burn worked themselves out and turned the friction into something that worked.  
   
It didn’t take long after that, not with how wound up they’d both gotten themselves. Dom could already feel the tension building low in his loins by the time Brian started giving the short, panted curses Dom recognized as his warning.  
   
He reached under their bodies, where Brian’s cock was bobbing hard enough to slap his belly, with the force of each of Dom’s thrusts, and wrapped his palm around it.  
   
“Say it again,” it should have come out a command, and maybe it still was, but his voice had gone raw and needy with holding out this long. “Tell me again, Bri.”  
   
“I’m…fuck,” Brian gasped. “…I’m _yours_ , Dom.”  
   
They were the last words Brian could manage, he gave a choked sort of keening sound and pressed back hard enough to stutter Dom’s vigourous rhythm.  
   
It had always been the way Brian came that pulled Dom over the edge. The way his body tightened and clenched around him, the throb and pulse as Brian spilled over his knuckles. This time was no different, even if it hit him harder than he ever remembered -- the adrenaline of their arguments and confessions still flooding his veins and making every nerve in his body feel raw, open and exposed.  
   
Punch after white hot punch of it slammed through him, making his spine go rigid and turning his limbs to rubber. Dom gave up the wheel and held on tight, buckling forward over top of Brian and stifling the sound of his gut-punched groan in the back of his hair.  
   
When the throes finally subsided Dom was all but collapsed on top of him as they lay panting harshly on the floor in recovery. It felt like maybe enough shit they might regret had been said for one night, but there was one thing that was important. He waited until his voice would be steady enough to turn his head and put words somewhere into the space between Brian’s ear and the back of his neck.  
   
“I don’t blame you, Brian,” Dom said, not meaning for it to come out quite so gruff. “…For Mia.”  
   
At this angle, with the hinge of Brian’s jaw just under his nose, it was hard to miss the way it clenched at the words. “I don’t blame you, and you gotta stop blaming yourself.”  
   
Brian twisted his neck a little, to try and look him in the eye, like he was going to argue. He got an arm under himself as if to shoulder out from under him, but Dom dropped his weight a little. Not enough to push down, just enough to ask him to stay put. Brian went still.  
   
“…I love my family Brian, and that means you. It’s been you probably since the day we met. Lotta guys can’t say that, can’t get the words out, that’s not my problem.”  
   
“Dom, I--"  
   
Dom dropped down a little harder.  
   
“I’m not done,” he said, cutting across the interruption. “That’s not my problem -- caring for somebody, saying it when I mean it -- never has been. My problem is knowing who I can _trust_.”  
   
Dom watched something in Brian’s jaw go tight again.  
   
“You think you’re a part of this family now because we got somebody in the house that shares our blood,” he went on. He let his tone go rough enough to prevent any more interruptions. “My father always taught me that’s not the only thing that makes family. Vince knew that, Jesse…Letty.” Dom still wasn’t good at saying the name. He hated the way his voice broke on it, but he had to say this.  
   
The red stripe on Brian’s arm was dried and fading now, Dom picked up one hand to use the thumb to rub it further into the skin.  
   
“Some families are blood,” he went on. “And some are chosen.”  
   
Brian kept both still and quiet, waiting for Dom to finish.  
   
“So now you got what you wanted from me,” he said, finally pushing up and away from Brian and sitting back on his knees. “So stay…go. But _choose_ , Brian.”  
   
That was it. Dom was all talked out, and all fucked out too, and judging from the silence as he got carefully to his feet and moved to pick up his shorts where he’d shoved them off against the cupboard doors, maybe Brian was feeling the same. So be it, then.  
   
But by the time Dom was done buttoning and zipping, it looked like apparently Brian wasn’t talked out at all.  
   
“It wasn’t about that.”  
   
When Dom looked at him, he had gotten to his feet and pulled on his boxers, but he hadn’t bothered with his jeans -- they still lay on the floor in a heap where Dom had discarded them. He was looking down, rubbing away the last of the mark on his arm.  
   
“Wasn’t about what?”  
   
Brian looked up at him, locking their gazes together again in that same unspoken honesty pact from before.  
   
“I didn’t choose this,” he said, gesturing around them at the now half-destroyed kitchen. “It chose me. But neither did you and I get that. I told you, you finally got your freedom and— that day I took off…God Dom, it wasn’t about my choice. I got responsibilities now and I’m not going to be the kind of dad my father was.”  
   
Brian broke off the steady, intense eye contact just long enough to grab his jeans off the floor and step into them.  
   
“So when it comes to _this_ ,” he left his jeans unbuttoned in favour of taking an earnest barefoot step closer, and Dom turned to face him. “If we do this, that’s only half of it. You have to choose it too, Dom. You want to know my choice, you know it already. When I tell you this, I mean it: you got me ‘til you say you want me gone.”  
   
They were standing close enough Dom could feel the added heat of skin again, but somehow it didn’t feel like the trespass it had before.  
   
Brian’s jeans were still unbuttoned and Dom reached out to yank Brian forward by the corners, just a little, before closing the button. “I don’t think those were quite the words you used…”  
   
“Easy on the merchandise.” Brian shoved playfully at his shoulder, but Dom just smiled and kept that tight hold on his waistband.  
   
“Fine, I’m _yours_ ‘til you want me gone,” Brian went on, and that stupid grin of his was back right where it belonged. “Possessive, fuckin’ toppy-ass control freak.”  
   
“Outta-control madman punk.”  
   
Brian just smiled some more and reached down and grabbed Dom’s wrist. Then he brought up the hand with the cut for concerned inspection.  
   
“Gonna kiss it better?” Dom asked, since that kind of fucking around still wasn’t new, but maybe now it felt just a little more right.  
   
Dom didn’t wait for another smartass answer. He tugged with the hand that was still gripping the edge of Brian’s jeans and leaned forward to do what maybe they should have done months ago.  
   
Right on cue, there was a plaintive sound from the rooms at the back of the house.  
   
“What’d I tell you about waking the baby?” Brian leaned backward, putting enough mocking tension into it to threaten Dom’s hold on his pants.  
   
“I didn’t. That’s Nico.”  
   
“Shit.” Brian pried Dom’s grip off of his waistband and moved to retrieve the rest of their clothes from the floor.  
   
“Well go take care of it, Mr Mom,” Dom said, moving to turn off the stove. The sauce was obviously ruined. “You’re the loud one.”  
   
Brian ignored the teasing remark and thrust Dom’s shirt at him, urgingly. “You know he’s gonna need _Tio Dom_ and his glass of water or he’ll never go back to sleep.”  
   
Seemed like Brian was in a hurry again, and this time Dom knew why. In their experience they had less than three minutes before Nico took it into his own hands to climb out of bed and track Dom down on his own, but somehow Dom didn’t mind moving a little slower all of a sudden.  
   
“Alright,” Dom drawled, shrugging the shirt back on. “Then when your boys come jet setting in here tomorrow, _you_ can explain to Roman why there’s nothing to eat around here, and their favourite nephew is too cranky to play with all the stupid expensive shit they’re always one-upping each other with.”  
   
“If we don’t get this cleaned up right quick,”  Brian grinned and gestured around with plastic cup he’d already retrieved from the cabinet at the kitchen spattered in sauce, and littered with chopped vegetables. “I’m pretty sure there’s gonna be no explanation needed, Dom.”  
   
Brian bent over the sink and put the cup under the tap. He hadn’t bothered putting his own shirt back on. Dom leaned in over his shoulder so their skin pressed together where his shirt hung open uselessly with half the buttons gone missing, likely for good, somewhere on the floor along with the knife and cutting board.  
   
“We?” Dom asked, low, in his ear. “What happened to ‘cook doesn’t clean’?”  
   
Brian put his tongue into his cheek in a way that suggested if he wasn’t holding a cup full of water Dom would have gotten an elbow to the ribs, and turned around to press the cup to his chest.  
   
“I got this,” Brian said, sweeping his gaze around the kitchen again and looking like he was trying to _stop_ smiling for once. “Go.”  
   
Dom relented and took the cup, and Brian moved away to grab his t-shirt off the counter and pull it over his head. This time, Dom had no compunction letting his eyes linger on the play of muscle before all that skin was covered up again.  
   
“Might as well throw that sauce out,” Dom said. “It’ll be all burned to hell by now.”  
   
“After everything I went through just now to finally get it the way I like it?” Brian asked, when his head emerged from the thin cotton of his shirt.  
   
Unbelievable.  
   
“You really _are_ a punk, O’Conner,” Dom told him. Because it was true.  
   
“Yeah,” Brian agreed, bending down to pick the knife up off of the floor. “You love me.”  
   
“Ain’t that what I just said?” That was true too, but Brian was obviously a lot less used to hearing it. He stopped rushing around the kitchen to lean against the counter and stare at Dom in surprise.  
   
For a moment, Dom thought maybe he was finally at a loss for something smart mouthed to say. But Brian didn’t disappoint.  
   
 “Guess so,” he agreed, finally. “...Punk.”  
   
This getting Brian to talk about anything that actually mattered business was a hell of an ordeal, but maybe when they actually got there it was worth something after all.  
   
Dom smiled. “Alright I’m going. Hand me that, from the bag behind you?”  
   
Brian turned around and fished the Hot Wheels package out of the grocery bag that was still on the counter.  
   
 “Heh.” Brian looked down at the little toy car, flipped the package over. “You get this from the guy two down from Luz-Marina’s vegetable stand? Pretty sure that stuff he’s selling ‘fell off a truck’.” Sometimes Brian’s old cop habits died hard.  
   
Dom shrugged. “Most of the best things I ever had in my life fell off a truck once or twice.”  
   
Dom gave one more significant look at the only one he still had left, then held out a hand ready to take the toy package before Brian could make anymore wise guy comebacks, but Brian was looking over his shoulder in a way that suggested their time was already up. Dom turned around and, sure enough, Nico was standing at the doorway to the kitchen with one little hand gripping the frame, watching them carefully.   
   
They waited for him to make his usual beeline for Dom, but he must have seen the brightly coloured package in Brian’s hand because he crossed the kitchen toward him without another glance in his direction. Some family was chosen, indeed.  
   
“Você quer um pouco de água?”  
   
In the few months Nico had been staying with them, the efforts Brian had been putting into improving his Portuguese were admittedly clumsy but still noticeable. Maybe the clues about how long Brian planned to be part of all of this had been there after all, Dom had just been looking in the wrong places.  
   
Nico didn’t show any surprise at Brian’s new language skills, he merely shook his head, eyes firmly fixed on the package. “Faz favor!"  
   
The pair of them looked at Dom, who couldn’t help smiling at the sight before nodding his permission.  
   
“Sure.” Brian crouched down and tore the plastic from the cardboard packaging to allow an eager set of little fingers to retrieve the toy car inside.  
   
“Obrigado, Brian”  
   
Brian looked up at Dom again, probably trying to work out how to explain where the gift had really come from. Dom shook his head instead.  
   
“Say ‘de nada’, Tio Brian.” Dom urged. It was only polite, after all. Brian smiled wryly.  
   
“De nada, buddy,” he said, ruffling the little head of tight black curls gently. “Ready to go back to bed?”  
   
Nico shook his head again. “Água.”  
   
“It’s okay, Tio Dom has it already, see?”  
   
Dom reached out a hand, but Nico reached forward and put his arms around Brian’s neck instead, who obligingly lifted him off his feet and stood up again, before looking around at the cleanup tasks that were still obviously on his mind.  
   
“I’m good here,” Dom reassured him. “Just sing him that lullaby Tisha likes.”  
   
Brian threw Dom a sceptical look and took the glass of water Dom offered him in his free hand.  
   
“Totally wasn’t flattering myself was I, _meu_?” Brian muttered.  
   
Nico’s response consisted of silently driving his brand new car over the curve of Brian’s shoulder and down the front of his chest. Dom couldn’t blame him. Maybe the birthday gift was one day early, but the little blue Maxima had been pretty impossible to resist.  
   
They hadn’t started yet, but Dom knew one day there would be questions. And when they came he would be ready. Nico would know his daddy was passionate and loyal and had a perpetual chip on his shoulder and a secret singing voice smoother than the leather in the back seat of a Cadillac, but most of all, that he had most definitely been a punk.  
   
Dom hoped Brian really did sing Nico that particular lullaby. They had a big day ahead of them tomorrow, but Brian was still looking at him like he was waiting for something.  
   
“We good?” he asked.  
   
“Nope,” Dom answered simply, laying a hand over Nico’s soft, curly baby hair and leaning forward to kiss the little cheek. “Boa noite, Nicozinho.”  
   
Then he used his other hand to cup the back of Brian’s head, and put a slightly longer, definitely firmer, goodnight kiss chastely on Brian’s mouth.  
   
“ _Now_ we’re good.”  
   
The quiet, thoughtful little tight-lipped smile Brian was sporting on his way out of the kitchen said volumes more than the old cocky, deceptively open-looking toothy grin ever had. And Dom got the feeling, as Brian turned back at the kitchen doorway to tell him that he ‘seriously better not throw all that sauce away’, that -- even if neither of them had much practice at taking things slowly -- maybe one day they were going to be _better_ than good.  
 

  
_~end~_   


**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> Written for the help_japan auction. I offered a 1000 word minimum Fast and Furious fic for any pairing. It has been a long time coming and I could offer a lot of excuses for why, but instead I’ll just thank my charitable angel for just how exceedingly patient she has been, and hope that the fact that it’s almost 10x longer than it was supposed to be somehow makes up for it.
> 
> So, this is for aquacutie16 over on LJ who likes NC-17 and a ‘very toppy Dom’ but said that Fast Five left her feeling ‘very domestic’ and asked for something where Dom and Brian find themselves raising both Brian and Mia’s new child and little Nico together. I hope it fits the bill. :)


End file.
